TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: I don't have a new bill for you yet. The insurance has started to kick in so it's going to take some time to figure out how much they paid. I think, in fact though, because we're doing these things now it's probably more than what you used to be paying; so it's probably going to go against your balance. It's going to cut into your balance, if that makes sense, because with this and what the sessions pay through the insurance, it's probably going to be over what you used to pay so it's going to be taking away from your balance.

CLIENT: Well, that's nice for both of us.

THERAPIST: For both of us.

CLIENT: For my anxiety and for your wallet. Okay. We're good. I continued working at getting a job so we'll see how it goes. [00:01:04] I'm working with a recruiter now, potentially two, if the other one is actually serious.

THERAPIST: Yeah, you were talking about that last time.

CLIENT: Yeah. Every waking moment is filled with dread is how I greeted Ginny this morning. I got an Ironman shirt $10. It glows in the dark, too, it turns out. I was pleasantly surprised. I came back from the bathroom we have a full-length mirror on the way out of the bathroom in the hall. It came with the house. I turned all white. The light is glowing on my shirt.

THERAPIST: Every day how did you put it to Ginny?

CLIENT: Every waking moment is filled with dread. This weekend trip is coming up to DC. I'm just like I spend every moment thinking about the dread of going and the anxiety of going. [00:02:05] The only thing you can do to make it better is to not go. So I wrote an e-mail today to my parents and said, 'Listen, I'm not going." Done. I'm not going.

THERAPIST: What were you going to go down for? To visit your friend, Pete?

CLIENT: Yeah, we were going to go down as a group. We were going to drive down tomorrow afternoon. It's about a six-hour drive down to DC. And here are all the things I hate about it: One I'm in the car for several hours can't leave. Sucks. Two I don't know where I'm going to sleep. There are places but none of them are in a bed. None of them are predictable. Three Saturday we're in DC and I'm trapped. [00:03:02] I can't decide when to leave DC, when to go. And Sunday we go to this bar called Player One that my friend runs and I'm at a bar for some period of time and I can't leave. Then we come back late Sunday night and I'm in the car again for six hours and get back late Sunday night.

THERAPIST: A lot of trapped.

CLIENT: Constantly trapped for a handful of hours of actual, positive interaction.

THERAPIST: What was the car ride like?

CLIENT: It's me and Victor and Eugene and Darcy.

THERAPIST: That's a long drive.

CLIENT: It's a long drive. The big part of it is I don't want to be trapped in a conversation with Victor for six hours. [00:04:02] So many conversations we're having these days are tension filled. He has all these imagined slights. Everything he hears is persecution. That's like all he hears. The other day we were playing a card game and someone was like [ ] (inaudible at 00:04:18) was making this move because it's competitive. He's like, "Dude. This is this and this and this." I'm like, "It's not a big deal." He's like, "Don't get on my case." Nobody's on your case. Eugene said, "Yeah, Victor." Okay. Nobody cares about what you do or why you do it. I don't know. But that's his entire thing everything is about him and everything is about . . .

THERAPIST: He's on edge or something.

CLIENT: He's always on edge. His father's plane blew up over his house when he was about five. His father was an amateur pilot who flew prop planes.

THERAPIST: Oh yeah, you told me that.

CLIENT: And so his entire life can be summed up in "if you make a mistake your plane blows up." [00:05:03] That's what his mother told him. "Your father made a mistake." He was flying his plane and he made a mistake and it blew up. That was the defining moment of his life. If you make a mistake your plane blows up. If you make a mistake you die. There was even a point when we were in college where he was like, "No. I am never wrong." He said that with complete belief that he is never wrong. He says these ridiculous things like, "I don't need other people to be successful. I don't need other people." This is that fallacy of the self-made man. There is no such thing. There has never been such a thing, especially for a straight white male in western New York growing up in a house that your parents owned with three brothers.

THERAPIST: You've already got some whether you like it or not. [00:05:59]

CLIENT: Exactly. All three of you got together with decent schooling with teachers that respected you and you were all born intelligent.

THERAPIST: He's got the nice mother, the mother that you like?

CLIENT: Yeah. [ ] (inaudible at 00:06:12) squandered, the use of which he squandered. That's what blows me so much about this. He has all these advantages that I didn't have and he still has all these horrible flaws, like his belief that he doesn't need people. He has turned on ad blockers for all websites and I don't agree with that as a way to exist in the world because those websites get their revenue from ads. He's like, "No. They should find a different way to pay for their stuff." "Okay, so what you're saying now is that service is free for everyone should be paid for by individuals on an individual basis?" He was like, "Yeah." I said, "Okay. So you want to pay a subscription to all the websites that you use? [00:07:03] Right now they're free, but you want to pay a monthly fee to every website that you use? That's what you're saying. That's the end result of this argument that you're putting forward." That's the thing that's always the problem. He makes these short-sighted, narrow-minded, self-centered arguments. That's the definition of stupid; you aren't thinking very far in any direction.

THERAPIST: This is the guy you're going to be in the car for six hours?

CLIENT: Twelve hours total. If intelligence is a sphere, which I think that it is, then his is very small. The larger that sphere, the more intelligent you are. The farther ahead you can look, the more variables you can encompass, the smarter you are. You can be very intelligent and not use any of that, right? You can blind yourself to so much by just believing that you are special, that you can take credit for these things, for an accident of genetics. For one, it's an accident of genetics that you even exist in the first place, an accident of biology that you exist. [00:08:14] Then it's an accident of genetics that you have intelligence. Then it's an accident of geography and culture that you are the most privileged class in the world -the rich straight white males in AmGeorgea, in industrialized countries. The second most privileged class in the world is middle class straight white males in other industrialized countries.

THERAPIST: You say he squanders it?

CLIENT: Absolutely. He thinks he owes nothing to anybody. He has all this power but no responsibility and the more we grow up and he doesn't, the more frustrating this becomes to me, the more that I have this friend who for years we've been best friends, we were inseparable, and now I'm like, "You are not growing up. You have not changed. You still whine." [00:09:18] He still whines when he doesn't get his way. I'm like, "You're a grown-ass man. Why are you whining?" He has this ridiculous things. He has this Vent server. Do you know what a Vent is? Ventrillo? It's a voice-chat server and you can pay a monthly fee and you get server space and you can get the password out to various friends. They can have voice chat for various games and whatnot. You get different channel rooms. You get channels for different games. All the friends he has from [ ] (inaudible at 00:09:43). That was the first voice-chat server that you could rent, but it's also the worst now. It's been surpassed, strongly surpassed by other options. In fact, Mumble is recognized as hands-down the best voice communication in the world. It's better than Skype, significantly better. [00:10:08]

THERAPIST: [Is it 802 forum?] (ph?)

CLIENT: No. It comes with voice chat.

THERAPIST: It's all voice chat.

CLIENT: It uses lower bandwidth.

THERAPIST: Mumble.

CLIENT: Yeah, and there's a set-up process you use where it teams itself to your voice. It understands your loud voice and your whispers and it can accommodate for that for everybody, so it does the sound balancing automatically for everybody. So for voice chat for games, it's fucking the best. For $10 a month you can have this server for 10 different people. If you're going to game, that the server. We all use it. Victor always wants us to use Vent and I'm like, "Oh, Vent sucks." People constantly have a disconnect and reconnect because their voice goes robotic. You have to adjust everybody's sound level manually. It's like, "Okay, what's your mic set on? Let me adjust for that." It's just fucking dense and it's working backwards. It's extremely last-century. [00:11:08] This is a turn-of-the-century technology, right? I'm like, "No, I'm not using it. I'm using Mumble. We all are using Mumble. Only you use Vent." He's like, "Well, my friends from World, they love it." They love having the free voice server. They don't have to pay for it. They show up, they have a voice server. He's like, "On Mumble they control everything." And you have to. You have to control everything. I'm sitting there playing on that thing when you and Kim, your girlfriend, and you tell her to disconnect and reconnect. What do you mean disconnect and reconnect? This is absurd. This is technology. Turn it off and on again. How often? Once every hour? I'm like, "No, we're going to Rich's." And he's like, "Well it kind of sucks that I pay all this money for a server and you guys won't use it." I'm like, "How does that influence anything? [00:12:01] How does the fact that you pay money for it mean that we should use it?" Victor says this. He pays money for a Ventrillo server. It's a service. He pays like $10 a month to host it. He's like, "I pay money." So basically if he pays money for something we are all obligated to use that thing instead of this other thing that our other friend pays money for.

THERAPIST: Yeah, he's got a way of almost like you've got to deal with him on his terms.

CLIENT: Exactly. Everything is about his terms. Everything is about "no, you do it on my terms." He doesn't get it. He's never interested in me, either, in terms of when I had the anxiety attacks he doesn't understand. He was like, "Why can't you just get over it? Why can't you just stop being anxious?" I'm like, "Are you a fucking idiot?" At the same time I want to be like, "Why can't you stop being narcissistic? Why can't you try to look beyond yourself." [00:13:01] That's something you can actually change. That's a patterned thinking. That's not some sort of chemical disorder. That's a straight-out way that you look at the world and that's something you can change actively and you should because it's fucking reprehensible.

THERAPIST: Yeah, right. I guess it's not only a function of him wanting to have the world exist on his terms, but he also can't enter into your world at all.

CLIENT: Right. He cannot see beyond himself. Every single relationship has failed because of him. Every single one. And Darcy Victor really likes her and she really likes him, but how long can that possibly last? They've been together a year. In the long distance, how long can it possibly last? She's very submissive, which actually works very well. She's her own person and everything, but she's perfectly willing to go with the flow, perfectly willing to deal with him [and his narcissism.] (ph?) [00:14:02] It's really good for him because he actually does accommodate her to a degree, but he is still the center of his world. We all are the centers of our own worlds to a certain degree, but we all . . .

THERAPIST: But there's a recognition that everybody . . .

CLIENT: That everybody exists, yeah.

THERAPIST: And in terms of you sort of saying that he hasn't grown, I think one of the ways in which he really hasn't grown is becoming a person that is able to kind of . . . Yeah, you're in your 20's and people are kind of comfortable being in their own world and not worrying about the others, but as you get older, you want people that can kind of connect with you.

CLIENT: Right, and he doesn't understand it. He really thinks that he doesn't need other people which, obviously, you need other people. You really lose that. I just want to be like, "You have nothing. You have a decent job and a long-distance girlfriend finally but you have nothing. [00:15:04] You have family you come to see. You have us, but only to a degree." (pause)

THERAPIST: It's something you really see about him. He's limited.

CLIENT: [ ] (inaudible at 00:15:29) It's very difficult to hang out with him because everything revolves around his perception of what it is. I don't hang out with him much and it's sad because he moved up here [ ] best friends. He was the best man at my wedding. I work so hard for my shit not to affect anybody else, so that's why this whole thing is an issue. [00:16:05] I wrote my friends, "Hi, I'm not going. I'm sorry, but I'm not going this weekend." It literally consumes every moment and I can't spend the next day and a half dreading going and then being unable to leave. Hey, Fred, go to this incredibly anxious situation that you cannot stop.

THERAPIST: Is there anxiety in the car, too?

CLIENT: Yeah, it's the exact same thing. It's in the car; it's everywhere.

THERAPIST: Are you kind of white-knuckling it?

CLIENT: Yeah, I guess so. Being in the car is awful. [00:17:03] Being on the highway for hours, it just gets worse and worse. It's terrifying.

THERAPIST: When you're in the car, what kind of comes to mind?

CLIENT: Eventually he's going to say something stupid. (pause) He gets his ideas of how an experience is going to go and then he tries to force the experience to go that way; and if it doesn't he gets very agitated. He's like, "No, Fred, I wanted us all to listen to this book on tape." Well what did we want? What were the rest of us interested in doing? [00:18:01]

THERAPIST: It's just a matter of time before he says something like that?

CLIENT: Right, and then I have to call him on it and I have to call him on it. I can't just sit there and let him do this. I can't do that.

THERAPIST: Well, you don't want to.

CLIENT: Right, nor should I have to, right? And when someone has behavior that is bad or toxic or negative, why the fuck should I tolerate it? The answer is that I shouldn't. Tolerance of limited world views should not be tolerated. Oh, my dog killed a bird this morning.

THERAPIST: Which dog?

CLIENT: Hank.

THERAPIST: Hank did, huh?

CLIENT: I wake up and I go downstairs and I'm like, "Hey, buddy. What's up?" And he's hiding under Ginny's chair. I'm like, "What's going on, buddy?" And Ginny is like, "Well, he's had a rough morning." Well, why? "Well, I yelled at him pretty hard because he knocked down a bird's nest and killed a baby bird." She was like, "I can't fault him for being a dog, right? Because he's a hound. That's his job. He's like I found this thing, I put it in my mouth. Good for me. Look what I did. I got it. It's in my mouth now." [00:19:06] And he doesn't understand that he's not allowed to eat it. He's like, "I did the right thing, right? I did it. Where's my reward? This is what I've been bred to do for hundreds of years find a thing in a tree, knock it down, put it in my mouth. I thought you were going to shoot it. (chuckles) Do you want to shoot it now?" And then we're like yeah, we forget that he's a predator. As adorable and cute as he is, he's a killer, though. The first time I saw him, he just snarls. I'm like, "Oh, golly." He's like, "Look. Animal. I can eat it." That's pretty good. So I've been really careful with the animals we want him to be around. We would never let him be around a cat because he'd probably lose an eye. [00:20:06]

THERAPIST: Or take a bite out of it.

CLIENT: Or try to and the cat will fucking blind him.

THERAPIST: Oh, they'll both lose an eye.

CLIENT: Yeah, that would be nuts. Cats are incredibly Logangerous to dogs because dogs don't understand. Dogs don't understand what can happen. Dogs fight for dominance like, "I will throw you to the ground and that will be it. And you'll be like 'Oh, God. I'm sorry.'" Cats are like, "No, no. We're murderers. That's what we do to survive all the time. That's our life."

THERAPIST: We're bred to deal with the predators.

CLIENT: Yeah, exactly, because they're supposed to be bigger predators, Logangerous predators. Dogs are hunters and companions and workers and soldiers. Cats are killers.

THERAPIST: Right. Cats are more predators.

CLIENT: Yeah. And that's everything they're built for is to leap and chase and evade and kill. That's why they have fucking claws. Dogs have long toenails and they can scratch you with those, but cats kill you. [00:21:05] Larger cats will fucking eviscerate you. Bobcats even. They'll jump on your chest with their front paws and cling and their back claws will come up and scoop you out. One swoop and you're dead, almost dead. You're eviscerated. You will die within the next few minutes while it eats your entrails in front of you. (pause) There you go. Killers.

THERAPIST: Killers. Yeah. And I guess is it in a way with Victor . . .

CLIENT: Right. I can't fault him for his nature except that he can change his nature.

THERAPIST: And you're sort of saying "I've got my nature, too" which is "I don't like this stuff and I want to tell him about it."

CLIENT: Right. And I try very hard not to let this shit affect other people, affect their plans, what they're doing. [00:22:01] The fact that there are several going gives me an out. I'm like, "Listen, this trip is not canceled." I cannot cancel this trip. I can simply back away from it. I tried. I honestly tried to do this. I was like, "Yeah, I'm going to go. It's going to be fun. We're going to have a good time. We'll go down for the weekend. We'll go." As it gets closer and closer I was like, "No. This is awful, just awful."

THERAPIST: It sounds like, too, that some of it is that you're going to go after Victor if he pulls any kind of nonsense.

CLIENT: Right, that's part of it, but the rest of it is that I know what I'm going to feel. I know when it comes time to figure out where we're sleeping I'm going to be incredibly stressed about it.

THERAPIST: What is the situation? Do you even know . . ?

CLIENT: There is a couch and a fold-out double bed. I would probably bring an air mattress, but where does the air mattress go? [00:23:03] When do I decide to go to sleep? There is a possibility that our friend, Logan, who lives a little bit away, would host one of us in his guest room; but then I have to figure out how do I get to Logan and how do I get back? And I have no control over that. It would be nice to see their kid, as well, Logan's son's wife. We kind of get along pretty well because I always hit it off with women. Always.

THERAPIST: So all that yeah. What is it, when you think about sleeping, what does it stir up for you?

CLIENT: I mean they have cats. Cats that are like, "Hey, what are you doing?" They mess with you while you're sleeping. They jump on your feet. I don't like that at all. I don't want that to be the case. [00:24:06]

THERAPIST: Yeah, you want to have a place where you feel safe.

CLIENT: Safe. I want to feel safe when I sleep. And so to have to look out for cats when I go to sleep is not good for me. It is not good for me. It's awful. I hate it. I absolutely hate it. (pause)

THERAPIST: Yeah, some creature lurking around.

CLIENT: I had a cat once. We had two cats. We got them when I was eight. Ginger and Ivan. Ginger was an orange tabby and Ivan was a black and white. They were both from the same litter. [00:25:01] Ivan was not cool. He was very stand-offish. Ginger was very friendly. I woke up one morning and Ginger was sleeping on my arm next to me. I was like, "This is nice. I like this." We let them just walk. We lived in the country. They would just go off and they would come back and go off and come back. One day Ivan came back with his front arm opened up, bared to the muscle. I never saw Ginger again.

THERAPIST: Same day?

CLIENT: Same day. They both went out and one came back. One came back wounded.

THERAPIST: Oh, boy.

CLIENT: And I never saw the other one again. We were like, "What happened?" The good cat died and the bad cat stayed for several years. [00:26:00] We were living in Wallingford when I was about 11 or so or 12 and we moved to Cheshire and my mother abandoned Ivan there. We just didn't take him with us when we moved. She was like, "The hippies next door like to feed him and hang out with him anyway, so they'll take him in." (pause) So we just ditched him. That was fine because I never liked him. And we had a baby. We had my brother, Kevin, and my mother was like, "Oh, the cat will try to smother the baby."

THERAPIST: The cat will try to smother the baby?

CLIENT: Yeah. Cats do that. [They'll lie on the baby's face sometimes until it chokes.] (ph?)

THERAPIST: Wow.

CLIENT: Who knows if that's real.

THERAPIST: I think there's even a movie about it, about cats stealing children's breath.

CLIENT: Oh, yeah. That sounds like some sort of movie. [00:27:09]

THERAPIST: While they're sleeping. Cats smothering the baby. Wow. (pause) That's not real. That's' not real.

CLIENT: I watched Ironman I and II and The Avengers again. Those are great movies. Those are great movies. (pause) It's funny. I think about it and then I just want to kill myself.

THERAPIST: You think about what?

CLIENT: I think about Ironman and Ironman II and The Avengers. Those movies are so good and I can never have that.

THERAPIST: What is it? [00:28:02]

CLIENT: I don't know. It's like I want to know these people, these characters. I want to be with them, but I can't.

THERAPIST: Because if you were with them, what would it be like?

CLIENT: I don't know. It's just better where they are. (pause) The great part of Ironman III is that he gets PTSD after The Avengers movie.

THERAPIST: Yeah, you had mentioned that.

CLIENT: He has really bad anxiety attacks. (pause)

THERAPIST: It's a better world there? Or better to be with them? You get to be better?

CLIENT: Yeah. [00:29:04] I don't have to be like what I am. I'm working through recruiters. I'm looking at jobs and I'm like, "These are all terrifying to me." I played the lottery twice this weekend because the Powerball is like $200 million $350 million. I might as well try a couple of times, right? A fucking roll of the dice. Why the fuck not? [ ] (inaudible at 00:29:38) Playing three times a year, there's just an infinitesimal chance; more than once a year, right? I understand the probability goes up if I play every day and I'm more likely to win than somebody who plays once a day; but still, that chance is so small. [00:30:04] Play once a day every year for ten years is effectively the same chance as only playing once in ten years. It won't cost you $2, it would cost you $460 if you play the Powerball three times a week. If you play four times a week, your totals will be 52 weeks, $416 a year for ten years, $4,160. That's in ten years for the chance that you wake up a millionaire.

THERAPIST: Yeah, that would fix everything, wouldn't it?

CLIENT: That would. That would fix everything.

THERAPIST: That's why a lot of people buy them. [00:31:01] You said that it's terrifying the recruiter, the jobs.

CLIENT: What if I find a job and I can't keep it? Then that's it. Then nobody is ever going to employ me, right? No one is ever going to want to hire me. It's like where have you been? Three different places in three years. Why? Because I can't stay. Because I can't stay anywhere because it's too scary. (pause) Ginny gets sad for me. She says that I'm missing out on life. I'm trying to remain safe throughout the course of my life.

THERAPIST: Things like this trip?

CLIENT: Yeah. Just avoid pain. [00:32:05]

THERAPIST: Well, yeah. I mean listen it sounds to me like you'd be more likely to make the trip if you had a train ride or something and you had a hotel room.

CLIENT: Right. Exactly. I would have control over these things. I am in control of these things. I know these things. I don't need to spend six hours in a fucking car waiting to be killed for six hours.

THERAPIST: Yeah, there's that, too. But also the tension of Victor, too, huh? It's unnerving. I was thinking, too, is it that you don't like to be the guy that kind of comes down on him?

CLIENT: No. I'm the only person who will come down on him. Everyone else just kind of tolerates it and kind of laughs like "oh, that's Victor." I'm like, "No, that's bad for him. That is bad for him." [00:33:03] He's living in this fantasy world where he doesn't need anybody else.

THERAPIST: It's got particular meaning to you because he was your best friend. He is in a different world than you.

CLIENT: Yeah, and he hasn't changed.

THERAPIST: He hasn't changed.

CLIENT: And he doesn't seem to learn from his mistakes.

THERAPIST: You've got one less close friend.

CLIENT: Yeah. It's fucking heart breaking. (pause)

THERAPIST: What was it like when you guys were . . . How would you describe when you guys [ ] (inaudible at 00:33:44)?

CLIENT: Thinking back on it, it was still all about him and how he wanted things to go. He has what I call [source reacquisition, like source amnesia.] (ph?) Specifically they learned where they heard something. [00:34:01]

THERAPIST: What did you call it?

CLIENT: Source reacquisition and reattribution, in that he makes it himself like "I came up with that idea. That was my thought. That came from me." I'm like, "No. It came from me." He's very good at taking my ideas and incorporating them himself. And I was like, "No, I did that." "Are you sure?" I'm like, "Yeah, I am sure." There's a magic deck our friend, George, created in college and it's on my [ ] (inaudible at 00:34:31). He's like, "No, I made that." I'm like, "No, George made that. That was George's. I was sitting there when he played it and you played a different deck against it and Adam and I are playing with fucking Ashley, who should never be allowed to play [ ] (inaudible at 00:34:45). Builds a wall of unicorns. "Why are you attacking me?" "This is a game in which we have to attack each other." "But I have unicorns and pegasi." I'm like, "Yes, you have unicorns and pegasi, which are fucking useless, by the way." [00:35:00] [ ] (inaudible at 00:35:02) . What are you even thinking?

THERAPIST: You just destroy them? You rip right through them?

CLIENT: Yes. Fucking inefficient creatures. (laughs) It's just ridiculous. She's like, "But they're pretty." This is not a game about pretty. If you want to play a game that's pretty, that's fine. Go play with your unicorns and your pegasi, but don't play a game [of Magic] (ph?) and then just expect that you're going to put a bunch of unicorns out in front of you and pull out the game. I'm not here to adapt to your fantasy world. Again here it is. I'm not here to adapt to your fantasy world, right? Whereas when I'm with guys, they [ ] (inaudible at 00:35:42) I am withdrawing. I am pulling back from this experience.

THERAPIST: That's right. There's something about this that . . .

CLIENT: It is unspeakably rude to let your shit affect other people. It is unspeakably rude. [00:36:03] And so I pull back because I'm like -this is it, guys. Either you can deal with me being tense and anxious all weekend . . .

THERAPIST: And you don't want to do that to them, huh?

CLIENT: Well, right. They're not going to like it either.

THERAPIST: I see. Yeah. Not that you'd feel like Victor, but you're more feeling like "I don't want to have everybody have to worry about me."

CLIENT: Have to worry about me or think about me or, even worse, just be like "oh, he's freaking out. Just remove from the equation. Boom problem solved. Problem solved. I don't go to DC. I don't go to see Pete, which I fucking want to see Pete, but yeah. If I had a train ticket and a hotel room it would be a totally different experience. A totally different experience. [00:37:02]

THERAPIST: Well you're also saying, one thing is if they know what it is like for you instead of what they fantasize it might be like for you and everybody else in the car is having the same experience and everybody is cool . . .

CLIENT: Everybody is having a good time. Oh, road trip.

THERAPIST: It's a good road trip. And you're sort of sharing with them, "Hey, this is hell for me." One: how is it going to affect them and Two: are they going to be A-holes about it like Victor.

Why are you even anxious about it?

CLIENT: He doesn't understand and he can't understand because he cannot look outside of himself.

THERAPIST: He can't look outside of himself. Yeah. (pause) And I think you're looking for if you're going to have a friendship with him, you want him to be . . . [00:38:01]

CLIENT: You can't have a friendship with him. You can have his version of what's happening. It's always about him and what he wants.

THERAPIST: You've got to go into his world and stay there.

CLIENT: I'm his friend when he gets to brag about me. He's like, "Oh, my friend, Fred, he's good at these things." And I have so many things he wants. I have a wife; I have a house. When I want one, I have a good career. (pause)

THERAPIST: Is he jealous?

CLIENT: I don't know if he's jealous. I think he's sad. I think he sees those things and he knows he wants those things. I don't think he understands why he can't have them.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: [ ] (inaudible at 00:38:55) nobody can have a house like that. I got lucky. I was in the right place at the right time. Viacom bought the company I worked at and I bought a house. That is simple. [00:39:07] They gave me a bonus package of $187,000 over three years, so I bought a house. I bought a house, I started a company, I invested in some other shitty companies and some other stuff that I worked to pay off. Then I lived for a year.

THERAPIST: You've still got the house. You've still got everything.

CLIENT: I've got the dogs; I've got the house. I've got the friends, but it's harder and harder to leave the house.

THERAPIST: Is it? Oh, okay.

CLIENT: I make sure I go for walks. There's nothing to do except go to the store and look at all the games that I can't buy, that I shouldn't buy and that I don't buy; the comic books that I don't have any interest in buying. [00:40:06] I was looking and the value proposition is ridiculous. I thought maybe I'll get an Ironman-something. It was $15 for six issues of a comic book that I'm going to read once and is mostly pictures. There is actually very little that actually happens. I'm like, "No, this is ridiculous. That's absolutely stupid. Collecting comics is stupid." (pause) The Avengers is amazing.

THERAPIST: Why? What do you think?

CLIENT: I see these actors. I finally got enough emotional distance from the movie that I could watch the making-of stuff, the behind-the-scenes stuff, because I don't want to see that curtain pulled back. [00:41:07] Now it's been long enough that I can actually watch that. Just seeing so many of the actors, some of the actors doing their own stunts and being physical and the way they do these things is so amazing. (pause) It's the thing I can't be because I wouldn't want to leave my house. I just want to win the lottery and stay in my house, build a security system for the house, build in central air, get a [ ] (inaudible at 00:41:52), just become safer, continually safer. Every night. Every night I lie in bed listening for the front door to open. [00:42:01]

THERAPIST: Have you noticed it getting any worse lately?

CLIENT: That's there constantly. That's constant. Every night I check the back door and the front door before I go to sleep. Every night. (pause)

THERAPIST: I guess one thing that I've noticed is lately here you've been able to talk more and more about what this anxiety-filled world that you live in is like; and not feel like you have to kind of spare me from it or something.

CLIENT: It becomes background noise eventually. That's what my life is.

THERAPIST: Yeah, but it's this dread. How do you put it again?

CLIENT: Every waking moment is filled with dread. (pause) It's like I just don't know what to do. [00:43:02] I just don't know what to do. (pause) I have this Amazon gift card from Foodler. You know how those Foodler points build up over the years? I had enough of those that I could turn it in for a $100 Amazon gift card. That's amazing. So that's what I did. I ordered some games off Amazon, which was cool. I got one called Mice and Mystics, which is a dungeon crawler in the Secret of Nimh style. It's cooperative. I actually got Ginny to play with me and it was a lot of fun. (pause) I just never want to leave my house. [00:44:01] The longer it goes that I'm unemployed, the harder it gets.

THERAPIST: The harder it gets to leave, yeah. Yeah.

CLIENT: And the worse everything seems. (pause) The worse everything seems.

THERAPIST: Maybe one thing we could think about doing is trying to meet another time. I think there's this Victory balance of wanting to stay in but also wanting to get back out in the world -maybe with the idea of how do you make the world feel a little bit safer to go out into? [00:45:02]

CLIENT: How, indeed. (pause) I like to walk places. I like to walk places. I have complete control as long as I'm walking.

THERAPIST: How is the bus?

CLIENT: The bus isn't so bad. It's incremental.

THERAPIST: Do you take the bus here?

CLIENT: No. Ginny drives me to the subway on the way to work and I take that. I often get the bus back, but I can get off the bus and walk at any point. Even the subway is [ ] (inaudible at 00:45:51) underground. [ ]

THERAPIST: How is the subway? Is it bearable? [00:46:01]

CLIENT: Yeah. It's okay. The subway is incredibly safe. (pause) Trains are safe.

THERAPIST: It's on one track.

CLIENT: Planes, for some reason, don't worry me. You would think they would, although I'd be like, "Oh, what happened?" Well, what happens is I'm terrified for two minutes and then I'm dead.

THERAPIST: You also haven't been in a lot of plane crashes.

CLIENT: (chuckles) No. None, in fact. I first took a plane ride when I was seven by myself across the country to see my father. My mother put me on a plane. I didn't realize she wasn't going with me. Puts me on a plane and sends me across the country; a six-hour flight, a seven-year-old kid by himself.

THERAPIST: And she didn't tell you?

CLIENT: No. [ ] (inaudible at 00:46:55) by then I didn't understand she wasn't coming with me. [00:47:04]

THERAPIST: You've been through a lot of traumatic stuff on the road.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: PTSD? (pause) And I would amend to that a mother that can't understand or get into your world or comfort you or make it feel safe at all. In fact, my image of her is that if it was neutral, it was a good thing.

CLIENT: That's the best-case scenario.

THERAPIST: Best case scenario is that it didn't . . .

CLIENT: Is that nothing happens. [00:48:00] The best-case scenario is that you're left alone.

THERAPIST: You talk about people in their own world. Boy, was she off in her own world and had no ability to enter into a child's world.

CLIENT: She was just crazy. Me, too, though.

THERAPIST: You, too?

CLIENT: Crazy in my own way. Crazy enough that I can't go on trips for the weekend.

THERAPIST: Why is that crazy?

CLIENT: Because it's not something people I have an issue with. People get in cars and go places. They go see their friends for a weekend. That's a good time. That's normal. What I am is insane. I just have to live with that. I just always have to live with the fact that I am insane. It's a constant presence, the fact that I'm a crazy person. [00:49:06] I'm just barely contained with medication. If I were not on this, what would I do? Manic people cannot control their actions. Terrible ideas seem like good ideas. The best people cannot control their actions. And it will get worse. It's going to get worse. It's going to get worse throughout my life. I'm going to get crazier as I get older and my brain breaks down.

THERAPIST: I guess I should say that when I heard that your doctor said that, I kind of disagree. (snickers) I've seen how a lot of people get a lot more settled in their lives.

CLIENT: I hope that's true.

THERAPIST: I don't know what he's referring to but . . . [00:50:00]

CLIENT: I won't survive if it gets worse.

THERAPIST: No, I've seen it definitely improve. Something about the brain actually, I think, slows down. I don't know what he's referring to. I just should say that that's not . . .

CLIENT: In your experience, your reputation?

THERAPIST: Maybe he's trying to scare you into (chuckles) staying [ ] (inaudible at 00:50:22)

CLIENT: Who knows. He's a strange little nebbish man. We're past time for me to get out of here. Sorry.

THERAPIST: I started late, so I'm sorry.

CLIENT: That's all right.

THERAPIST: All right. Think about if you would be up for coming again, especially as it seems like the [pain and thing] (ph?) is something that's going to add to the anxiety.

CLIENT: Hopefully. I'm glad it's starting to cut into the balance. The last thing I want to do is raise the balance again. (chuckles) I've got to get going. I'll think about it.

THERAPIST: And I'll look at times, too, while you're thinking about it.

CLIENT: Okay. Okay, Carl. Next week.

END TRANSCRIPT